Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Douglas Carswell and Lord Maude of Horsham

Wednesday 7th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (UKIP)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)]

My responsibilities are for efficiency and reform, civil service issues, public sector industrial relations strategy, Government transparency, civil contingencies, civil society and cyber-security.

[Douglas Carswell]

The Minister for the Cabinet Office stated in October 2010 that public bodies would be made more meaningfully accountable. Specifically, what new mechanisms has he put in place to make public bodies more meaningfully accountable to this House and, indeed, to the public?

[Mr Maude]

Our concern with public body reform has always been to ensure that accountability is improved. A number of functions have been brought within Government to make them directly accountable to this House through Ministers. A number of other activities have been discontinued completely. The number of public bodies has been reduced by about a third. When we came into office, there were no data about the actual number of public bodies. In addition to increasing accountability, we have also saved the taxpayer very considerable amounts of money.

Civil Service Reform

Debate between Douglas Carswell and Lord Maude of Horsham

Tuesday 19th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (Con)]

I welcome the Minister’s talk of sharpening accountability and of better accountability upwards to departmental boards. He even talks of giving Secretaries of State more of a say on appointments. Why has he not considered enhancing accountability to the Select Committees of the House? Surely without that change, the mandarin is not truly outwardly accountable to the public.

[Mr Maude]

I completely understand my hon. Friend’s point. He will know that the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, who is away on Committee business at the moment, strongly takes that view. The Government have not opined on that suggestion at this stage, because the House of Lords Constitution Committee is conducting an inquiry into exactly that issue and we do not want to pre-empt its deliberations. My hon. Friend’s point, however, is a powerful one.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Douglas Carswell and Lord Maude of Horsham

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

The particular issues are well outside my responsibilities, but I will cheerfully look at the question that the hon. Lady raises.

[Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (Con)]

11. What steps he is taking to reduce fraud in Government procurement.

[The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)]

We are committed to tackling fraud and error in all areas of Government business, including public procurement. We believe that we can save the taxpayer billions of pounds a year by doing that across Government. Every central Government body will carry out a spend recovery audit by the end of next year, which should generate savings of between £50 million and £100 million. The Home Office and the Department for Transport have already recovered significant amounts by doing this.

[Mr Carswell]

In welcoming the greater efficiencies and economies of scale that come from centralised procurement, does my right hon. Friend recognise the danger that centralised procurement can, in effect, throw up barriers to entry for smaller suppliers? Might this not help to explain why small and medium-sized enterprises are not always getting their fair share?

[Mr Maude]

As I said earlier, SMEs are increasing their share of Government business. It has doubled since the election and is set to continue further. I point my hon. Friend to what happened with the Government’s aggregated travel contract when we brought it together: one of the two contracts for travel across the whole of Government was won by a small business, which is rapidly becoming a bigger one.